Eyes Wide Open - and the obvious comparison

OK I'm just going to throw it out there: Eyes Wide Open is the Israeli Brokeback Mountain. I haven't read any reviews yet so I don't know if anyone else has drawn the same parallel, we'll see when I do my reviews research at the end of the post.

So why do I say this? Well this is the plot (potential spoilers):

Eyes Wide Open is set in a Orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem where family man, local butcher and pillar of the community Aaron has his world turned upside down when young student Ezri turns up at his shop with no job and no where to stay.

Aaron gives Ezri work and lets him stay in the flat above his shop. They don't talk much but Ezri obviously has an effect on Aaron who eventually succumbs to the physical attraction he feels for the student and a clandestine relationship begins.

The tight-knit community soon grow suspicious and Aaron is threatened and then given an ultimatum. He  chooses his family over maintaining his relationship with Ezri and being shunned by the community and Ezri is sent on his way.

Ok so there isn't a mountain or sheep but the idea of lifting the lid on suppressed homosexual feelings against a backdrop of an ultra conservative and homophobic society is very Brokeback Mountain. Don't you think?

But is it any good? Well, the story is enacted in a beautifully subtle way but even though it feels like there is more at stake for Aaron in his very traditional and religious community, the film lacks the pathos of Brokeback. The heart-tugger is when confronted by the Rabbi he tells him that he felt dead before Ezri and now he feels alive. But there is no tragic death and scene of yearning for a lost love that really is the killer emotional punch in the American film.

Maybe I'm an emotion junkie. Maybe I just don't appreciate how conservative the Orthodox community is and how scandelous an idea this is but the pace and emotions just feels, well, a little languid.

It's not a terrible film by any stretch, it is a good film with superb performances by the central character but it just sits in the shadow of a rather big mountain.

And the reviewers views:

And there we go, first review I pull up mentions Brokeback Mountain, Steve Rose in the Guardian gives it three stars saying: "Like Ang Lee's movie, this is responsible, restrained and intelligent, but if anything, the risky subject material is handled with too much caution."

Kevin Maher at Times Online mentions Brokeback too but gives the film four stars saying: "You leave the film with a sense of characters and lives transformed utterly." 

Rotten Tomatoes UK gave it a very respectable 83%

Related link

Came across this interview with Jake Gyllenhaal in the course of researching this post in which he talks a little bit about working on Brokeback Mountain and I think his emotion pretty much underlines what I was trying to say about Eyes Wide Open not quite living up to the pathos of Brokeback.

Comments

[Rev Stan]

Of course you can disagree with me!
I completely take your point about the differences and how homosexuality isn't recognised in Orthodox Jewish communities - I do confess to knowing little about the full consequences of in the post.
I don't think I would describe Brokeback as shallow, it is after all set in a period when homosexuality wasn't widely accepted, indeed sodomy laws weren't repealed in Wyoming until 13 years after the film is set.
Although I enjoyed Eyes Wide Open I just wasn't quite as moved by it as I was Brokeback.
Really interested in your last comment. Am I to take it that you interpreted the final scene in the spring as being suicide?
It is certainly ambiguous and the thought did cross my mind but ultimately I thought he returned there to try and recapture that time when he had felt alive.

[Sodapop Curtis]

May I respectfully disagree with you ?

If a parallel has to be drawn, I think it would rather be with "Angels in America" : the Mormon character (I can't remember his name) can't come out because the members of the Mormon community don't "believe" in homosexuality. It is pretty the same here since Orthodox Jewish people don't even have a word in Hebrew for "homosexual" and "homosexuality". They vaguely talk about "sin" but they never mention it. Indeed, the characters are quite silent during the whole affair (as you mention it, they don't talk much to each other). Homosexuality just doesn't exist. Consequently, the dilemma the characters have to face is : how can I belong to a community which rejects me because of what I am ? They can't be members of the Orthodox Jewish community AND homosexual.
I thought this film was fascinating personally. It is certainly not flawless, but it is less shallow than "Brokeback mountain" because it questions identity, religion, freedom and free will.

(By the way, I didn't understand the end of the film the same way as you did. To me, there is a tragic death... You must be a more optimist person than I am.^^)